52james Reviews

El Norte (1983)

Preaching to the Choir

[2/10 · 29 March 2020]

I have never tried to lower an IMDb score before, but all the high reviews of this film comes from its heart beating in the socially political and ideological right place. Show it in a class to teach youngsters about the horrors of immigration if you like, but please don't pretend it's a great film! Again and again, El Norte shows crude and forced unbelievable scenes so clearly intended to make its ethics felt that the aesthetics of the viewing experience gets jolted right out of the realm of suspended disbelief. The rats in the "sewer," for example, are as fake as the pipe the poor Guatemalans creep through. The transition of filthy LA hovel from dump to blessed tidy homestead feels to me yet another instance of A Clear Point Being Made. Even the comic laundry machine instruction go way past realism into some ditsy insistence that rich white matrons are too spoiled by their ease to imagine how insanely unreal their control over Life really is. Usually a film rated in the high sevens at IMDb can be relied on for a good cinematic experience. This version of the American Dream is more a nightmare of forced ideology, supported by handsome actors reading lines as well as you could expect, with Dream Scenes insisting on the Big Points, but a script preaching so hard that only the Choir could rate it above a 5. I give it 2 in hopes others might help get the Imaginary High Seven back down to a score it deserves.

Monogamy (2010)

if only the first and last third counted!

[4/10 · 18 February 2013]

I enjoyed the beginning and very end of this film, but in the middle where the engaged photographer gets lost while his fiancée is in the hospital I really felt like quitting. If you can endure him getting a ukulele in the gift shop, you've got way more grit than I. And his inability to come up with even one good line to explain why his beautiful girl should stay with him? Aw, come on! How can he be that stupid?! I just couldn't believe anyone could be so entirely clueless as our hero in the aimless witless wandering inner 30 minutes of this film. Maybe if you've got a fast-forward that could allow you to watch the loser less closely—as you'd speed-read or skim through some scenes you can't enjoy in an otherwise good book—then you could rate this much higher than I can for the way it sags in its excruciatingly dimwitted longueurs. I know theoretically I shouldn't hold it against the film itself that its hero is such a sap; but he's such an incredibly stupid jerk for such a while, I just can't forgive the movie for making me share his bad company!

Bass Ackwards (2010)

beautiful trip

[9/10 · 11 January 2013]

I had to add my few impressions just to get the average review feeling for this film up closer to the score it really deserves. Beautiful photography and deliciously fitting music give the road trip a genuine convincing real emotional satisfying impact. I wasn't looking for plot, so didn't miss there not being one. The film makers here know how a film depends on feelings evoked by imagery and believably suspenseful drama. How you can get that without plot is how this movie works. That a feeble little VW micro-bus can get so much mileage with so little power is the impressive surprise. Yep, lotsa higher-powered vehicles pass it by, or find it's in their way. But Linas keeps on driving along and we get somewhere pretty satisfying eventually.

Chinese Chocolate (1995)

Chinese Chocolate probably Carob with Chemicals

[1/10 · 10 November 2012]

This is the worst movie I've seen in a long time! Ouch! It's in focus, and has audible sound and some pretty nice colors and costumes: that's the best I can say for it. A couple of pretty women cross paths, but that surely does not make it clear that they were made for each other. They meet all sorts of crummy men, and equally rotten women, make business deals, make money, and if you've got this movie on DVD it's really hard to see why you'd want to watch the whole thing. Do yourself a favor and don't even bother trying to figure out if a prostitute is any worse than a Chinese immigrant to Toronto. None of the characters is developed deeply enough for you to care, much less to understand, if there's a moral point in this horrible show. Or is the point everybody uses everybody else, so you might as well get married in a church to get your green card? Ick! I'm going to have to reconsider my instinct that movies that have won film festival awards might be worth watching.

The Scenesters (2009)

horrible drivel

[2/10 · 19 October 2012]

If you borrow this film based on the 18 Film Festival palms listed at the top of the case, as I did, you're apt to be terribly disappointed by way too many minutes of silly pointless meandering nonsensical filmic moments adding up to less than nothing. Yep, it's edited and has a sound track, but it's no more a hip murder mystery than it's an "award winning" production. It has evidently played at a lot of festivals, and occasionally been deemed "interesting" or "well-written," but unless you're entertained by bad actors pretending to do a documentary, you may end up just wondering as I did: "Why did I bother to watch the whole thing?!" I'd rather watch "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" twice than see even half of this movie again. Even "Hank the Cave Peanut" is more entertaining. There are a few laughs in this, but Ouch! they're spread real thin. Do yourself a favor and watch almost anything else. A moment of camp, another of kitch, 8 moments of dreary cliché posing as art.

The Illusionist (2010)

beautiful art film

[10/10 · 14 February 2011]

My family of four went to see this downtown yesterday, and we all really loved it! Kids, aged 16 and 14, liked it just as much as my wife and I. We'd all enjoyed "The Triplets of Belleville," and "Mon Oncle," and were eager to see something along that line; if you liked those, you'll love "The Illusionist." We did not find the plot boring, nor the sometimes sad scenes depressing. The art is really beautiful, the action and movement all amazingly entertaining. If you think the ending is sad, you might want to think again about the many hopeful portents for better lives. The range of emotional moods, dark to light, wet to dry, drunk to sober, serious to silly, make this a most lively and convincingly realistic bit of fantastic film art. Rated PG because there's a lot of smoking and a few pretty grim scenes, I'd say parents of any kid old enough to behave himself at a movie should be glad to enjoy this with polite company of any age over the Age of Reason. Don't bother trying to understand the assorted French, Gaelic & English "dialogue," as this film is showing you that music and visual art are enough to make a great movie!

What the #$*! Do We (K)now!? (2004)

Can't Believe I Watched the Whole Thing!

[1/10 · 25 April 2010]

Is it a spoiler to warn that you may never figure out why the deaf divorced photographer keeps getting interrupted by talking heads spouting scientistic folderol full of New Age Feel Good baloney about addiction, hormones, transcendence, and truth? I borrowed this DVD from Cornell's Alternatives Library, as its title and blurb made it look interesting. But snake oil doctors pretending to know what they're talking about just keep interrupting a "plot" that I found just barely engaging enough to prevent me from ejecting the disk in disgust at yet another kook with a strange accent or lisp interrupting the pretty but grumpy heroine from making her living at a bad job. Somehow the magical mystical sermonettes get into Amanda's head and help her take a bath that turns her life around. Guess how! I'm sad to admit I watched this stupid flick to the bitter end, and I still can't tell. Maybe it was the toothpaste on the mirror hiding the reflection of her thighs?

Love Serenade (1996)

gills are ambiguous, seen from Dimity's POV

[8/10 · 31 December 2003]

Just because Dimity sees gills doesn't mean they're really gills. She is, after all, pretty weird. The ending shows Dimity's "I Wuv You" balloon tied to Sherry's body definitely moving away, but Sherry's not visible under water, and the film has set up the river as a place where dogs can be taken away, either by big black holes or large fish. This movie is better if you don't assume you know what's going on under water or what those strange marks on Sherry's neck truly mean. Is he a fish? Really?! Does he truly die at the end? The sisters' reaction to Sherry's "death" is what's really interesting here, whether he's a fish or not.